


The Proper Tools

by Omorka



Category: Eureka
Genre: Food, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 09:23:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omorka/pseuds/Omorka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fargo's trying to be sneaky; like <i>that's</i> not suspicious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Proper Tools

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place somewhere early in Season Three, before Henry's release from prison, and may contain minor spoilers up to about 3.02 or so.

Jack Carter arrived at the door of the bunker after a _very_ long day; he was hot, sweaty, and still slightly groggy from the day's emergency. "Sarah," he growled as he approached the door, "could you go ahead and have something cold and caffeinated ready for me by the time I get to the kitchen, and a beer on hand right after that?"

"Certainly, Sheriff Carter," she replied, swinging the door open. "By the way, Dr. Fargo is here running some tests on my kitchen equipment. I let him in; I hope you don't mind."

"Not as long as he doesn't interfere with my sitting on the couch and waking myself back up," Jack groused. "Honestly, sleep-gas grenades? For a paintball game?"

"At least you missed the one five years ago," responded Fargo from the kitchen, hastily putting something small and metal back into a hard case and snapping it shut. "People were stepping on Jo's paint-mines and getting drenched for weeks afterwards."

Jack retrieved an iced coffee in a frosted mug from S.A.R.A.H.'s refrigerator door. He sipped it; it was a little sweeter than he would have made it, but it was otherwise exactly what he needed. "Thanks, S.A.R.A.H. What were you working on, Fargo?" He wasn't really sure he wanted to know, but it seemed rude not to ask.

Apparently Fargo didn't really want to talk about it, either. "Oh, nothing big. Just checking a few different types of, um, heating elements." He looked up with the too-big grin that usually meant he had made a mistake he didn't want you to notice. "I think they need a little more work before they're ready to install, though. I'll, uh, run some more tests and get back to you, big girl." He patted the wall affectionately and headed for the door. "Bye, Sheriff."

"Bye, Fargo." Jack took a long pull on the iced coffee; he could feel the caffeine working. "S.A.R.A.H., hold off on that beer. Can you make me another one of these, with about half the amount of sugar? These are almost as good as Vince's."

"Thank you, Sheriff. I'll get started right away." Something whirred beneath his feet.

"Fargo didn't dismantle anything, did he?"

S.A.R.A.H. didn't laugh - she wasn't programmed to - but she sounded vaguely amused. "No, Sheriff Carter, he was demonstrating some new equipment we are debating installing. I appreciate his efforts, but very few recipes in my database call for the sort of equipment he was testing."

"Well, he just seemed kind of nervous." Jack looked back in the direction of the door.

"Far be it from me to speak ill of my creator, but when is Dr. Fargo not nervous?" S.A.R.A.H. asked.

"Fair enough. Is that second coffee ready yet?"

\---

Jo came back from Cafe Diem with a to-go bag. "Carter, do you have any idea what's going on today?"

"Other than the usual?" She favored him with the get-with-the-program scowl. "No, I haven't heard anything. What's up?"

She snorted. "Fargo's messing around in the Cafe's kitchen, and I couldn't get Vince's attention for more than ten seconds at a time."

Jack shrugged. "I haven't the foggiest, Jo, but since you're back from lunch, how about if I take my break and see if Zoe knows anything?"

"Good call. I didn't catch her while I was there, but maybe they sent her to the freezer again." Jo unpacked her lunch - a stir-fry beef salad and some fried won tons, it looked like - and began digging in.

Jack ambled across the street and pushed the door of Eureka's only diner open. He didn't see Fargo or Vince anywhere; Zoe was at the counter running the industrial-sized milkshake blender.

"Hey, Zoe." Jack grinned at his daughter. "Vince working you too hard over summer vacation?"

"Oh, please," Zoe shook her head. "With this weather, half the town's out barbecuing their own meals for once, and the other half just wants drinks and ice cream." She glanced sharply at the back kitchen area.

"Where's Vince?" Jack looked over her head, but no one was visible back there.

Zoe huffed, "He's back there with Fargo working on something. The last time I went back there, Fargo saw me before I could say anything and managed to spill a cup measure of flour all over everything. If he hasn't cleaned it up before he tracks it all over the kitchen, I'm going to strangle him."

"Take a number." Jack slipped halfway around the bar and peered over the divider. Fargo and Vince were huddled together in front of a huge mixing bowl; Fargo was holding something small and metallic, turning it back and forth in his hands.

\---

Fargo slid his key-card through the slot of the laser design workshop. It wasn't that it was terribly high security, and honestly, his key-card let him into most parts of the building that weren't part of Section Five, because one of the executive assistant's duties was to wrangle department heads, and if you couldn't get into their labs, herding them was somewhat difficult. But it made Fargo nervous to be in here, all the same.

He carefully set the block of his new alloy on the laser saw grid, holding it in gloved hands and placing it as close to the center of the grid as he could. He stepped back to the control panel, removed a tiny memory card from his pocket, and slipped it into the reader. A series of designs - geometric, organic, abstract - flashed on the screen. He picked a quintet of them, and dropped them into the laser saw's queue.

The laser beams sprang to light, ruby and aquamarine beams dazzling on the surface of the metal. Fargo ducked behind the control console and forced himself to wait, to be patient. He hadn't pressed any actual buttons. He should be safe.

A long five minutes later, the lasers powered down again. Fargo peered up over the edge of the safety barrier, assured himself that the manufacturing cycle was over, and edged towards the grid. His alloy had been sliced away with exacting precision, leaving five shapes, each about two and a half inches wide. He put his gloves back on and picked one up, inspecting it from each side, then sliding it into a small fabric pouch.

He was examining the last one when the green light flashed by the door. He hastily shoved it in the pouch and began picking up the leftover fragments of his block of alloy.

"Yo, Fargo?" Zane gave him the you're-in-trouble smirk. "Dr. Blake is looking for you. She wants to know where the ultracorundum samples have gone. What are you doing fooling around in the laser lab?"

Fargo held up one of the fragments. "I was testing the selenium-iridium alloy to see if it held up to the same stress levels as the ultracorundum did." He looked down and mumbled," Obviously, it was not a resounding success."

Zane took the fragment from him and examined it. "Well, it's not what the DoD wants us to test today, anyway, so get your butt upstairs and take the samples with you."

"Sure thing. Thanks." Fargo was out the door like a shot. Zane traced the curve of the fragment he was holding with one finger. It looked almost like a stylized flower petal.

\---

The sheriff and the deputy exchanged a glance before knocking on Fargo's door. "Fargo?" Jack called, loudly. "Are you in here?"

A muffled call came from somewhere inside the house. Jo sniffed. "Do you smell something cooking?"

Jack tried the door; it wasn't locked. As he opened it, a wave of scent washed over the both of them. "Yeah. And hot oil, like someone left the deep fryer on at a burger joint. But why would Fargo be making French fries?"

"Help," came a weak voice ahead and to the left of them. Jo charged forward, a hand going towards her firearm; she ducked down the hallway, turned the corner, and burst out laughing.

" 'S not that funny," complained Fargo. Jack followed his deputy and was treated to the image of Fargo dangling a few inches above the ground with his arms caught behind him, suspended by one long metal arm of a large machine that appeared to consist of a large batter bowl, several arms tipped with oddly-shaped metallic implements, and a several-gallon vat of hot oil.

Jack suppressed his chuckling. "How long have you been up there?"

"About five hours. Please hurry. It's going to run out of batter in about fifteen minutes." No wonder Fargo sounded weak; it was holding him by the back of his shirt, and the fabric that was supporting his weight was pressing on his diaphragm.

"Why didn't you just take off your shirt?" Jo reached up to un-snag Fargo's clothing from the arm, and found it was quite tightly stuck. She pulled a knife from somewhere on her belt and cut him free; he dropped to the floor in a heap.

"It had my arms at a weird angle, and I couldn't reach. I only managed to call you guys by swinging so my phone hit the edge here." Fargo indicated part of the machine's support structure.

"What happens when it runs out of batter?" asked Jack. The machine pressed the end of each arm into the batter bowl, and then into the hot oil, where a thin layer of batter slipped off the metal shape and began sizzling. After a few minutes, yet another arm scooped the bits of fried batter from the oil, drained them, and tossed them into a small chamber full of white powder. The chamber vibrated to coat each bit, and then another arm again piled them onto a plate, which was by now overflowing.

"It's supposed to shut down, but then, it wasn't supposed to mistake me for a spare rosette iron to begin with." Fargo typed something into the keypad beside the batter bowl, and the machine whirred and went still. "With my luck, it would have decided to dunk me in the frying kettle instead."

Jo looked at the piled-high plate. "So what is this thing?"

"It's an automated rosette maker. My mom always used to make these around New Year's. I've been trying to find a way to fry up the perfect rosettes, in bulk, in time for the holidays. Vince claims that it's always going to be more efficient to do it by hand, but then you have issues of temperature and timing, and you don't always turn the iron exactly the same way each time." Fargo gestured at the pile. "Try one."

Jo looked at him askance. "I didn't know you cooked." She plucked one shape from the pile - an oddly intricate butterfly - and bit into it.

"Where did you think S.A.R.A.H. learned it? I taught her everything she knows. Well, I mean, now she's watched about twenty thousand cooking shows and has a crush on Alton Brown, but when she started, she pretty much just had my recipe collection." Fargo unplugged the machine.

Jo made a sound that Jack associated with either pain or foreplay. He turned to her to see if she'd managed to burn herself on some part of Fargo's gadget, but it looked like the latter was closer; her eyes were rolled back in her head and she shivered. Then she looked at the smaller man with an oddly predatory expression of delight. "Fargo, these are delicious!"

"Yeah, I think I have the batter recipe fine-tuned. Turned out the keys were to use just a little bit of melted butter, and to add a hint of vanilla extract. You really want to go for subtle." Fargo grinned, a little bit. "Vince wouldn't help me with that part. He said it was too close to competition."

Jack picked up one of the rosettes. It looked something like a wheel, or maybe a sunflower. "So this is what you were showing him and S.A.R.A.H.?"

"Specifically, the actual cooking irons. I needed to get shapes that allowed the maximum surface area to be exposed to the oil, and that permitted the inside corners to get crisp before the outside edges burned." Fargo pointed at the metal shapes on the ends of five of the arms. "I don't know if these are the theoretical optimal models, but they're pretty close now."

Jack bit down. The fried batter was shatteringly crisp, and the fragments melted in his mouth almost immediately. The dusting of powdered sugar lent just the right amount of sweetness, and the after-flavor was surprisingly complex. Without meaning to, he let out half a moan of his own.

"These are _really_ good." Jo reached for another one.

"Yeah, I've been eating the test batches for a week and a half, and I'm not sick of them yet." Fargo took one and munched on it. "But I can't exactly either talk Vince into trying it out or install one in S.A.R.A.H. until I get that bug worked out."

"I think if you installed one of these in S.A.R.A.H., Zoe and her friends might never leave the house." Jack reached for another one himself; these things were addictive.

"There is that, too." Fargo brushed a drop of grease off of his hand and left a smear of powdered sugar in its place. "Maybe I should concentrate on getting the irons perfected and not worry about the automation process for right now."

"That seems reasonable." Jack caught himself reaching for a third and made himself stop. "Well, if that's it, then I think we'll head back."

Fargo handed Jo a paper bag. "Take some of them with you, if you want."

"Thanks, I think I will." She dumped about half of the overflowing pile into the bag. Jack foresaw an afternoon of greasy, sugary fingerprints all over the office, but he couldn't work up the willpower to object. He grabbed another rosette and urged Jo towards the door. "Thanks for dessert, Fargo."

"No problem. Come by anytime." Fargo turned his attention back to the selenium-iridium irons as Jo pulled herself and Jack away from the platter again and headed out, handling the bag as if it held buried treasure.


End file.
